Wherever you are in your career, you may be feeling the urge to shake things up.
This doesn’t always mean that you’re getting ready to quit your job and run off to the next opportunity.
Sometimes, taking the time to learn a new skill or improve your existing knowledge can fill the same void; plus, it’ll increase your chances of getting employed in the future!
If you’re considering using LinkedIn learning to kickstart your new learning journey, we’ve compiled a list of some of the best LinkedIn courses on the platform.
We hope you’ll see that there’s something for every industry and every skill set, regardless of your age or position in the company.
Without further ado, let’s explore the best LinkedIn learning courses below.
Become A Small Business Owner
Since the pandemic emerged, the global growth of entrepreneurship has been fuelled by a desire to be self-sufficient, free, and successful.
As a result, more and more small businesses are popping up at all corners of the globe, but for some, taking the leap into self-employment can be daunting.
For those in need of a helping hand, LinkedIn released its “become a small business owner” online course, which aims to help budding entrepreneurs learn everything they need to know about setting up their own business, with just ten hours of content.
This course walks its users through everything, from understanding a business’s legal and financial aspects to the operational side.
Users will learn how to build their own business models, develop a robust business plan, and establish their business as a legitimate identity.
The “become a small business owner” series includes 11 courses, including entrepreneurship foundations, finding and testing a business idea, creating a business plan, finance essentials, and many more.
For those with limited knowledge of starting up a business, we found this course was easy to understand and broken down into manageable chunks.
Each concept is explained in simple terms, and the content gradually gets more complex as the course progresses.
This is an excellent stepping stone for those wanting a greater insight into the small business world.
Pros
- There are ten hours of content covering different topics, and you can stop or start your learning at any time.
- The course includes a finance foundations module, showing budding entrepreneurs how to file their income taxes.
- Videos can be stopped and started at any time, and the information is explained in simple terms.
Cons
- The module on filing business taxes is only relevant to the US, which may restrict other learners.
- The final badge of completion isn’t accredited. Although it’ll look good on your resume, it has no real weight.
Learning Python
For those wanting to learn more about computer programming, building software, and building websites, one name will spring to mind – python.
In the tech industry, there’s a huge demand for job applicants to have the knowledge and hands-on experience with python, and for applicants, this can be a make or break feature in their applications.
With LinkedIn’s “learning python” course, users can gain some of the most basic skills and knowledge to run python, including how to install it, python syntax, and how to run python programs (find out more about LinkedIn Learning here).
This course even shows users how to work with dates and times in python, with further help on retrieving and parsing JSON, HTML, and more from the web.
What’s more, users will receive a shareable certificate on completion of the course, which can be displayed on their LinkedIn profile.
This is ideal for learners looking for accreditation that they can easily show off to prospective employers.
Although we found this course incredibly informative, we felt it was a little too challenging for beginners.
Although this course is marketed as ‘beginner friendly’, we’d advise taking another, simpler, python course before embarking on this course.
Pros
- This course is highly informative, and it walks its learners through some of the most important aspects of python, including installation and how to run python programs.
- Learners receive a certificate to display to employers, which shows they are competent at using python.
Cons
- Although this course does discuss beginner aspects of python, such as installation, we found that most of the content was too challenging for complete beginners. However, some topics aren’t covered at the sort of depth required for beginners to understand.
- The course is only three hours long. For such a complex course targeted at beginners, we would expect to see more learning time.
Develop Your Marketing Skills
Marketing is one of the most in-demand jobs out there.
More and more people are looking to break out of their current roles and take on the marketing world, whatever their background.
It’s possible to land a career in marketing without a marketing-specific degree, too, which makes this field even more attractive for those looking to shake up their career path.
LinkedIn’s “develop your marketing skills” course is perfect for beginners and those with a slight knowledge of the marketing world who want to continue progressing.
The “develop your marketing skills” courses teach students the basics of digital marketing, help them develop their social media marketing skills, and help them identify new opportunities for online marketing.
There are a total of nine courses and fourteen hours worth of content, which cover topics such as Google Analytics, the foundations of content marketing, marketing tools and services for beginners, and more.
At the end of the courses, students will receive a badge of completion to show off their new knowledge and skills.
Although this course would be suitable for beginners, we feel that to get the best experience, learners should have some base knowledge of marketing before pursuing the course.
However, some concepts can be challenging to understand with not enough explanation.
Thankfully, these videos can be stopped and started at any time, so there’s always the opportunity to research challenging topics before taking the final test.
Pros
- There is a range of comprehensive topics that cover marketing concepts of multiple difficulties. These include Google Analytics and the foundations of social media marketing, which talks about how to leverage platforms, build brand awareness, and more.
- Like most other LinkedIn courses, you’ll get a badge of completion to demonstrate your participation once you’ve finished the course.
Cons
- Some concepts are too challenging for complete beginners to grasp, and as the course progresses, more in-depth topics aren’t explained as simply.
Developing Your Emotional Intelligence
LinkedIn’s “developing your emotional intelligence” course has fast become one of the platform’s most popular learning courses.
First released in 2017, this course gives students the opportunity to learn how to develop their emotional intelligence and use it in the workplace to build effective and healthy relationships.
This course is suitable for almost all fields and all employees, regardless of their position in the organization.
Throughout the course, instructor Gemma Roberts helps students develop their self-awareness and explains, in simple terms, what it means to have emotional intelligence.
By becoming more self-aware, students can learn how to identify any triggers for their behavior – especially those that can affect workplace performance.
The course also teaches students how to build strong relationships by focusing on, and establishing, behavioral intentions.
Like most other Linkedin courses, learners will gain a shareable certificate to show their participation in the course.
We found that because this course is so easy to follow, there’s no requirement for students to have any prior understanding of emotional intelligence or how it works.
Students can learn how to manage relationships, build social awareness, and more, all while practicing they learn with exercise files and quizzes.
Pros
- This course isn’t relevant to just one industry, so it can be taken by people working in almost any field and at any position within the company.
- You’ll gain a shareable certificate at the end of the course to show you’ve completed your learning.
- Because this course is about a human concept rathe